A New Perspective on Work

Yesterday, I caught part of an interview by Dennis Rainey with a man named Robertson McQuilkin. McQuilkin resigned as president of Columbia International University in June 1990, to care for his ailing wife, Muriel. There was a question posed to him about what a drastic career change that was for him. He stated that he never looked at his work as a career. He did not consider himself career-oriented, but cause-oriented. Whatever the will of God was in your life, wherever it would lead you, that is where you went.

I thought a good bit on that, and how that would apply to my own life. It is amazing how, even as I prepare to enter full-time vocational ministry, I look at my work as a career. It's so ingrained in me to think of it that way that it's nearly impossible to have a different perspective. However, Jesus, himself, seemed to have a different perspective.

Jesus didn't enter his 3 1/2 years of public ministry with the goal to reach the top of the corporate (or ministry) ladder. He simply had a goal in mind, something that he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt was God's will in his life.

This doesn't mean we stop looking toward a future, toward meeting corporate or personal goals. It does mean, however, that we remember that there are topics, issues and projects that God would have us accomplish as we are on this earth. We are here as His ambassadors, having been given the privilege to be called children of God (2 Cor 6:18 - "I will be a Father to you, and you will be sons and daughters to Me"). And, more importantly, our causes are much greater than any career we could ever choose. Our cause is that of a living God, a Christ, who died and rose again after being born in form of a man. This season, especially, we remember, worship and rejoice in that cause.